BT Profile

Published: 2009-03-05

The company lead by Ben Verwaayen since February 2002 is an interesting case amongst the European incumbent operators as it was one of the first to be privatised in a market that was one of the first to be liberalised (in the mid 80s). British Telecom has its origin in 1980 when the General Post Office was broken down into separate postal and telecom services. In 1984 British Telecom was partly privatised and made its IPO (Initial Public Offering) on the London stock exchange. In 1993 the full privatisation was complete with the British state no longer holding any shares in the company, which became known as BT rather than British Telecom.